Your party represents four from a circle of twelve professionals who
were petrified into
stone statues a thousand years ago. Because of downsizing of the local
wizard's guild, only
four can be thawed out to fight an evil lich which threatens the land.
Presumably because
of brain damage caused by 1000 years of being a rock, you'll start at
level 1. Also,
presumably because of looting, your equipment is noticibly missing and
you are forced to
defend yourself immediately with stray rocks and pimp slaps from the
fire spewing demons
who are suddenly upon you.

Once you get yourself situated, you will find yourself a run of the
mill fantasy world called
Kalynthia. To protect this world, you'll have to locate the Book of
the World, and three
pieces each of a legendary sword, staff, and orb that you'll need to
defeat the lich.

Gameplay

Abandoned Places presents you with a 3D corridor viewpoint similar to
Dungeon Master.
Your four characters will forever stand in a 2 X 2 formation, fighting
in real time.
Controls are mouse driven, but fortunately you can move and swing your
weapons with the
keyboard.

While I appreciated the mix of spells given to spellcasters, accessing
them is difficult.
There is a short list of five spells that you scroll through in
alphabetical order, with
no hotkeys. The more spells you have the longer you have to scroll to
find them, and
older, less useful spells are not phased out, so the more your
spellcasters know, the
more senile they appear.

There are some ugly frustrations inherent in this game. The worst is
trapising through
the world map, looking for anonymous pixels where the dungeons may be
while being attacked
by random encounters that net you NO experience points. The food
system is a useless
chore, and you don't get to actually use the artifacts that you spent
12 dungeons
assembling.

Theme

Abandoned Places is themed on exploration of the world map and diving
into the anonymous,
eponymous points for the dungeon hacks. The dungeons themselves are
the highlights, ranging
in difficulty from easy to nightmarish. Unfortunately, a few are set
up so that a minor
decision will render you unable to complete the dungeon because of poor
design.

The towns and cities are some of the least interesting points of
dullness in any RPG ever
created. There are about 30 towns on the map. Five of them have
someone within whom you
can strike up a conversation. Only one of those people, maybe, will
actually talk to you
about something other than a business transaction.

Character Generation

Pre-game, you will be able to select 2 of 8 warriors, 1 of 3 mages, and
1 of 3 clerics,
based on their names and looks alone. Each has their own stats and 2-4
starting spells
which you'll get to discover once the game has actually started.

When you perform an action, like successfully swinging a weapon or
casting a spell, you'll
gain experience points from it. This is the only way to gain
experience, so you'll have to
balance your individual character usage. The most points are gained by
damaging an enemy,
but there are a limited amount of enemies to be had.

Leveling up only takes place in training grounds in a few cities around
the world. Fighters
predictably get tougher. Mages and clerics get more spells which are
not chosen by the
player.

Villainy

The menace of Kalynthia is Bronakh, shown during the intro as a
grindy-toothed, cloaked lich.
Bronakh's evil has laid waste to a few locations and generally made the
populance cranky.
Once you've collected and assembled the artifacts needed to destroy
him, he'll appear and
declare that he'll allow you to challenge him, if you can make it
through the Hall of Rage,
a non-stop fireball-flying, trap infested dungeon. This feat makes as
much sense as a bully
allowing you the privilege to fight him if you can crawl through a
woodchipper intact.

Spoilers

There's a bug in the description of where to assemble the Staff of
Supremacy. The actual
location is the graveyard, Draken Tor.